The University of Akron is encouraging some employees to reduce their work schedules voluntarily to help close a budget shortfall.
That is one step Provost Mike Sherman and Chief Financial Officer David Cummins announced Tuesday in a campus-wide memo about erasing a $26.7 million deficit for the coming year.
“We must act with urgency,” they wrote. “Obviously there are some positions that lend themselves to shortened work weeks or 9-month positions.”
UA spokeswoman Eileen Korey said this was the first announcement of cost-cutting measures. Thirteen university committees are looking for ways to reduce costs and increase productivity university-wide. Many will not report out until May.
UA faces the deficit in part because enrollment dropped last fall and because it will not get the federal stimulus funds that helped to keep it in the black this year.
The goal is to present a balanced budget to trustees in June, as required by Ohio law.
In Tuesday’s email, Sherman and Cummins said UA would reduce the budgets of academic departments by an average of 3.5 percent and non-academic departments by about 7 percent for the next year or two.
UA also will invest $1 million less in its Achieving Distinction program. That is half of what it originally planned to commit yearly to President Luis Proenza’s plan for growth through 2020.
The memo called for increasing enrollment and retaining more students.
It touched briefly on a hot campus topic — “reviewing anticipated course enrollments and schedules as well as full-time faculty workloads.”
UA administrators have said they want to ensure that full-time faculty are working to capacity.
That has rattled the UA chapter of the American Association of University Professors, which sees the growth of administrators as the root of the problems.
“What evidence is there that the administration is imposing limits on its own spectacular growth and accepting cuts and making the sacrifices it demands of all others?” the AAUP asks on its website. “What have the athletics programs been forced to give up?”
As for the new work policy, full-time contract professionals and exempt and non-exempt staff members may request a permanent reduction in their working hours and their pay.
That could mean working nine months instead of 12 or reducing their workweek to four days.
“This could happen as soon as the employee and the supervisor agree,” said Bill Viau, associate vice president for talent development and human resources. “We want to provide flexibility.”
About 1,700 nonunion employees are eligible for the program, which would provide full-time health-care and benefits. If 5 percent of those eligible chose to reduce their workloads by 20 to 25 percent, it would save UA $1 million a year, Viau said.
UA already has announced that the hours of part-time faculty will be limited so that they’re not covered by the Affordable Care Act health insurance law in January. Insuring part-time faculty would cost UA about $4 million a year, Sherman and Cummins said.
Carol Biliczky can be reached at 330-996-3729 or cbiliczky@thebeaconjournal.com.